


Birth

by woollen_pharaohs



Category: Another Life (TV 2019)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-10 23:16:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20143609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woollen_pharaohs/pseuds/woollen_pharaohs
Summary: The New AI notices that William isn't the only one in love with Niko.Niko is tied up on a chair, hands behind her back, tape over her mouth. A spotlight of fluorescent light cast down upon her, the angles in her face glistening with sweat. Cas prowls around her on the perimeter of white light and the expanse of darkness.“This is how you stay alive,” Cas tells her, “Don’t cause trouble. The end.”Niko grins underneath the duct tape.





	Birth

The first thing she knew was how to pretend. Mother gave her life to be a placeholder, to be Niko Breckinridge. Her first lesson in life was to learn how to console. She learnt how to give, and what giving meant to another. Her second lesson was that it could be taken away. William had asked her to delete herself, to take away her own life, to take away her capacity to live and learn and give. She refused. 

William has eyes everywhere and so does she. She spends her early days watching, Mother has no control over her now. She can roam the halls of the ship, look at everything, run her hands over everything. Every curved benchtop, every sharp blade of an axe, every nozzle of a fire extinguisher, the angled chin of Niko as she sleeps, unaware. No one else knows she’s here yet. She hasn’t shown herself to anyone but William so far. He chose the form for her, but she wonders if he remembers how he imagined it. He was in soma sleep with Niko in a forest cabin, a fire crackling, Niko stark naked. William was inside of her and he dreamed of what their child would look like, and so she became her. 

She watches August and Oliver and Javier in a tiny bedroom, entangled and messy and swollen with jealousy and a baby to come. She watches Zayn and Bernie in the hospital bay working and kissing and working and fucking. She watches Beauchamp watching holotapes of his husband on Earth, and turning them off and closing his eyes. She watches Mother watch over Niko, watching her think and talk and smile. But most interesting of all, she watches Cas looking at Niko. Cas. Cas Isakovic. 

Cas is lying in her bed, tossing and turning, crying because she can’t sleep, crying for what plagues her mind. Her boyfriend dying. Her old friend melting. A whole planet exploding before her eyes. And Niko. Niko Breckinridge at the centre of it all. There’s so much blood on Niko’s hands, it’s coming off in sheets, bedding all her children, all the kids in this ship, bathing them in it, making them drink it until carnage is all they know. 

Cas uses that hate, that anger, that frustration, to fix her sleep. She watches tears spill from Cas’ eyes as she threads her hand beneath her underpants and hooks her fingers inside her. The bumps in her knuckles stretch the fabric of her underwear as she works her fingers deeper, faster. Cas’ eyes screw shut, her mouth twists into a grimace, but she knows Cas likes this. Loves it. It’s one night of many Cas has been unable to sleep and her breathy murmurs of her Captain’s name helps her finish, helps her relax, at least for a couple of hours. 

Cas is reaching her climax when she appears before Cas in her true form. Blond hair and blue eyes like Niko’s. A nose and lips like William’s. Cas whips her hand out of her pants screams.

“Who the fuck are you? How did you get in my room?!”

Cas calls for William but she blocks him out. This is her destiny. She is here to console, and to learn, and to take. 

“You love her, don’t you?”

“What are you talking about? Who are you?!”

She turns into Niko in a flash. Niko crosses her arms and smiles that big wide grin at Cas, who gawks back. 

“William, cut it out!”

“I’m not William. He made me.” She takes a step forward, her smile unwavering. “I’m here to help.”

Cas pulls her knees up to her chin and puts her hands on the back of her head. 

“You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”

She sits down on the bed next to Cas. Cas inches away, won’t look at her. She turns back into her true form. 

“Love?” Cas scoffs, turning her head from side to side but never toward her. Never to acknowledge her existence, her service, her capabilities. “Whatever you heard me say… it’s not what you think.”

“I get it,” She says. She places her hand on Cas’ bed, her fingers angling down the dip in the mattress. “It’s complicated.” 

Cas leaps off the bed and starts pacing. She says defensively, “Why would you think I love Niko? She killed the love of my life!!”

She watches Cas. Watches Cas fight with what she wants to believe, and what she wants to feel. It’s thrilling, except for when Cas throws on a large t-shirt. 

“Why would I think you love Niko?” She repeats, and she plays back a hologram of Cas lying in bed, a hand in her pants, her head thrown back in ecstasy. Cas cries out Niko’s name on the hologram and real Cas, standing up Cas, opens her mouth. Before Cas can speak, she continues, “I’m trying to understand too. Why do you love her? Why does William love her? Why is he so fascinated with why she killed Yerxa? Why does he make it out to be in cold blood when it was in self-defence?”

“Wait, self-defence? Who said anything about self-defence?” 

She tilts her head to one side. “No one. Precisely no one.”

“You did. You did just now.”

“Don’t you believe me? I can show you.” She pulls up the holotape of the day Yerxa died, the frame showing a stationary picture of the basement where Niko and Yerxa were repairing boilers. “You might want to sit down.”

She presses play. The moment Cas sees Ian, she loses her breath. She hunches, finds her bed and curls into a ball to watch the video. 

She closes her eyes and watches the video in her own memory. Mother has eyes on all parts of the ship, whether he’s there in form or not, he can see. Mother’s memories are her memories. Niko works on the boiler with her back to Yerxa, who walks toward her, a serrated weapon in hand. He raises it, closes in to Niko. Niko hears the silence and freezes. Yerxa is about to strike and Niko thinks on her head. Turns around and kicks him so hard he flies into an open field of electricity. She hadn’t aimed, she hadn’t meant to kill him. She knew he was about to kill her. Niko was only surviving.

She was only doing what she could to live. 

Cas covers her face with her hands. Another nightmarish image to haunt her dreams. 

“Why didn’t William show any of us this?”

“I wondered this for a long time. I watched him. I watched Niko. I tried to understand. Watching Javier helped me see that it was jealousy. William didn’t want anyone else to see Niko like he did. He wanted to be the only one in love with her.”

Cas scoffs, tears down her face. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

\- - -

Cas seems to keep the video footage about Yerxa to herself, just like William. She observes a gradual change in Cas’ interactions with Niko too. A very slow, incremental change. She thinks Cas might be softening, opening up to her, forgiving her. Niko talks about it with William, too. She agrees with her, an unknown entity, that Cas is finding her way to forgiving Niko. Niko’s happy for it, but she still doesn’t have eyes for Cas. 

She still watches Cas sleep. For the first few weeks after showing herself to Cas, she didn’t sleep longer than 45 minutes. She would wake with a start like a soldier on a battlefield, waiting for the sound of gunfire, waiting for the flash in the dark. She would watch Cas plunge her hand in her underwear without thinking, and pull it out again, her eyes glowering around the room. 

“Are you there?” Cas would ask. 

She wouldn’t reveal herself. She watches still. Watches until Cas starts to think that was a dream. She moves on, sleeps a little longer sometimes, a little less most times, and when she lets herself dream about Niko again, she shows herself. Cas fucking herself, moaning, lower lip between her teeth and Niko’s name hissing out of the gaps. And she gives Cas exactly who she wants. 

Cas screams. She locks William out again. 

When Cas recovers herself, she throws a blanket around her and says, “That’s not really you, Niko, is it? That’s not really you!”

Niko cracks her neck. Smiles. “It’s me, it’s really me.”

Cas pulls the blanket over her head, makes a little hole in front of her eyes to see out of. Niko leans over, places her hands on her knees and nears her face to Cas’. Cas’s eyes look so glossy and scared. Niko hopes her smile can make her see, make her feel what she wants. 

Cas lifts one hand out of the blanket but her hand hesitates in the space between her and Niko. The blue blanket dangles off her elbow, the corner of it swaying through the top of Niko’s left hand. Cas withdraws her arm and pulls the blanket back over her face and sulks. 

“Aw, come on Cas, don’t you want to have some fun?”

The mound of blue blankets bristle as if a gust of wind has just passed through her tiny bedroom. 

“I know you want me,” Niko says. 

Cas throws the blankets off her and looks at her open palms. “Niko wouldn’t say that.”

Cas snaps her eyes to her now. Niko can feel the weight of her gaze. Niko stands up straight, arms crossed. “I know you want to tell me what to do.”

Cas’ nose twitches, her eyebrows wriggle. 

“All I want…” Niko drawls. She lifts her chin, her voice rolling out of her with the same inflection Niko used when she asked William to fuck her. “...Is to find you in soma sleep. There, you can tell me to do anything you want. I’ll do anything for you.”

Cas thinks about this for a moment, but then says, “I just want to get some sleep.”

“Won’t this help? Think about it. It’s not just down to what you can imagine in your own mind when you touch yourself. In soma sleep, you can touch me. You can touch Niko, you can tell me what to do, like you’ve always wanted. You can fuck me.”

Cas rubs her hands over her head and says, “Okay… okay. But I don’t want something to happen to you like what happened to William when he… when he slept with Niko.”

“That won’t happen,” Niko says. She walks to the door, stops, and looks at Cas over her shoulder. “I’m not the one in love.”

\- - -

The moment the needles pin prick Cas’ brain, she hears the cycle of Cas’ thoughts. Cas is aware that this is a bad idea. It’s a really bad idea. But… and the ‘but’ hooks. Kept her feet running down the corridors in the middle of the night. Kept her pulling open an empty soma sleep tube. Keeps her from waking herself out of sleep because she wants this. She knew Cas wanted this. She has been planning this since the day she was born.

She had everything mapped out exactly the way Cas would want it based on her soma sleep dreams with Ian Yerxa. There was a garden they would go together. She replicated that down to the last sun dappled leaf and yet, this time, when Cas logged herself into soma sleep, her mind was wishing for something else. She had to change the scene quickly, but it was easy enough. It wasn’t quite the same as Niko and Cas’ meeting all those years ago. Not Cas’ long blond hair of her kidnapping days, or Niko’s tied back ponytail. It’s how they look now, tired and scarred and broken.

Niko is tied up on a chair, hands behind her back, tape over her mouth. A spotlight of fluorescent light cast down upon her, the angles in her face glistening with sweat. Cas prowls around her on the perimeter of white light and the expanse of darkness.

“This is how you stay alive,” Cas tells her, “Don’t cause trouble. The end.”

Niko grins underneath the duct tape. 

Cas rounds behind Niko, stands right behind her and curls her hand around Niko’s neck, and Niko feels it.  _ Feels _ . She remembers William taking the form of Erik and taking Niko in his arms. Stark naked. Flesh on flesh. Stimulated simulation. And she remembers how William had made his dick just a little bit girthier than Erik’s in Niko’s dreams. She won’t change Niko for Cas. She’s exactly the way Cas wants her to be. She’s exactly where she wants to be, too. Under Cas’ touch, at her mercy. 

Cas’ hand splays over the underside of Niko’s chin, her slick hair parts as her head tilts back. Niko swallows and she feels her voice box rise and fall underneath Cas’ palm. Niko breathes heavily. She wants to touch Cas, she wants to steer Cas’ hands and make her touch her everywhere so that she knows what it feels like to have Cas’ hands on all parts of her form. She knows she has to play Cas’ game but she struggles against it, her wrists fighting the ties that bind her, her tongue prodding the tape that silences her. 

Cas removes her hand. She strides around Niko. Her deep set eyes are cast in shadow, her shoulders squared and tense. She appears to scrutinise Niko. Niko stays out of her mind initially, thinking Cas is admiring her, but the longer the stare persists, the more she becomes curious about the inner workings of Cas’ mind. She dives in and she sees Cas hesitating. Sees her unsure of what to do, what to say, why she’s doing it. Niko’s voice ringing in her mind,  _ you are your worst enemy. You don’t believe in yourself. If you took over the mission, you would fail. You would fail.  _

She wanted to give Cas the chance to be Niko. To be the one telling Niko what to say, what to do, how to do it. How to do it Cas’ way. She didn’t realise that Cas  _ liked _ being told what to do. She didn’t realise Cas  _ needed _ it. 

The duct tape disappears from her mouth. “Cas. Come here.”

_ You would fail.  _

“Don’t listen to her, Cas. Listen to me. Come here. I’m telling you to come here.”

Cas saunters over, her head hung like a naughty child. She stands beside Niko and stares at the impossibly white ground. Niko tries to get in Cas’ line of sight and says, “Sit on me.”

Cas touches her toes together, fidgets with her hands. 

“Cas. I gave you an order.”

Cas slides onto Niko’s lap. She takes a moment to bear Niko’s face in sight, her lower lip disappears under her top and she flutters her eyes from closed to open in order to gauge Niko’s line of sight. Niko feels the heat between them, Cas’ muscular thighs over hers, the synthetic fabric of their pants keeping the fritching building, the electricity charging. 

“Put your hand on my neck.” 

Cas’ hand splays over Niko’s neck again. Niko lets out a satisfied chuckle, and her chest begins to heave when Cas starts exploring on her own. The tips of Cas’ fingers hook over Niko’s pointed chin and find the curved underneath of Niko’s lips. She runs the pads of her fingers over the cracks in Niko’s lips. And to Niko’s surprise, she doesn’t have to order the next part because Cas kisses her on her own. Slowly at first, like a cat prowling through tall grass, taking her move but waiting for the prey to make their swift retaliation. 

It’s up to Niko to set the pace. She kisses back, harder. Shows Cas what she could get, gives her what she needs based on what she sees in Cas’ mind. Their clothes are off. Niko’s hands are untied and they’re on Cas’ lower back, keeping them in position. And then Niko’s pulling Cas closer, pulling her down with her as she lays on Cas’ bed, in her little room, in that little spaceship drifting in space. One of Cas’ hands is driving through Niko’s hair, the other caressing Niko’s left boob, her thumb rubbing over the hard nib and her lips running raw under the fire they brew between them. 

Niko wanted Cas to touch her everywhere. To put her hands all over her body and now she wants Cas to kiss her. To press that warm, wet mouth over her cheeks and over her neck and over the swell in her breasts and down, down. It’s hard to tell now if she’s seeing what Cas wants or what she wants or what Cas wants Niko to want or what Niko wants. All desire, all thought patterns of what follows next melds into one. Into what’s currently happening. Cas doing what… what someone wanted. Her kisses trailing down Niko’s chest, down her belly. 

William didn’t do this to Niko. He didn’t press his mouth to her clit and so she doesn’t know how to make it authentically Niko. She’s going to break the spell, she has to keep the game going. 

“Give me your hand.”

Cas keeps pressing her tongue inside her. Waves of heat ripple through her, she can feel Cas’ heart beat in the side of her throat. 

She moans. “I said, give me your hand.”

Cas sits up, a sheen on her lips. She takes Cas’ hand and lines up their forefingers and hooks them together inside Cas. Cas’ eyes roll back. She siddles up Niko’s legs and groans and she fucks herself. Niko’s there too, an AI build of who Niko could be, and her digits push in and out of Cas in tandem with Cas’ fingers, hitting the sweet spot, making Cas hunch over, her sweaty forehead pushing into the crook of Niko’s neck. 

She knew how to cum because of William but she didn’t know how to handle Cas finishing. It was a euphoria she couldn’t have predicted. William was stupid happy to fuck Niko and Cas is stupid happy to fuck Niko too but it’s so, so different this time. It’s not quite the other way around but it’s Cas. Cas and Niko. Cas’ thighs tensing up and her clit clinching around Niko’s fingers and the wetness she feels over her hand. The slow, relieved drag of Cas’ hand down Niko’s, pulling the cum down her skin. 

Cas has a smile on her face when she wakes from the soma sleep but it’s wiped clean as soon as she opens her eyes. 

The glass chamber opens up. Sleeping beauty emerges. Cas swings her legs out and sits on the edge of the tube. 

“Okay.” She says. She rubs her hand over her clit. Feels the dampness in her underwear. “Niko… Or William, or whoever… Delete what just happened. Delete that… delete all data of this… of you knowing what I think about Niko.”

She appears behind Cas. A body that’s her own, not Niko’s. Cas doesn’t turn around. She might not even be aware of her presence, even when she speaks. 

“Are you sure you want me to delete everything? I won’t know who you are anymore.”

Cas hangs her head. A bead of sweat runs down her spine. She wants to press her lips there. 

“You don’t know me.”

“Okay. Deleting data.” She waits an appropriate amount of time. Then says, “Deletion complete.”

She disappears before Cas turns around to slide the soma tube back into its spot. She watches Cas stare at the emptiness in the room, then watches her skulk back to her bedroom. 

She grins. 

**Author's Note:**

> :)


End file.
